


i found a saviour

by ama



Series: young tzadikim [1]
Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Academia, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Jewish Character, Domestic, Established Relationship, M/M, physical affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 12:13:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5205497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ama/pseuds/ama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is up late working on his thesis, and Erik convinces him to sleep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i found a saviour

**Author's Note:**

> again, takes place in an as-yet-not-written AU where Erik Lehnsherr, half brother of British commando Archie Hicox, is raised in the UK and meets Charles at the beginning of his PhD studies. although this is in the same verse as i found god (i found him in a lover), they can be read independently.

Erik wakes at two o'clock in the morning with a jolt and the inexplicable feeling that he should not have been sleeping in the first place. He lies still for a moment, trying to sort out his confusion, before he realizes that he is still fully dressed in a polo shirt, slacks, and his leather jacket; his knees are hanging over the edge of the bed and his feet, still clad in his shoes, are flat against the floor. Of course he isn't supposed to be asleep, he thinks with a yawn. He was supposed to be waiting "just ten minutes" for Charles.

In retrospect, he was a fool for believing that.

His fingers fumble at the clasp of his watch and he uses his powers to set it down on the bedside table. He leans down to undo the laces of his shoes and slips them off, and then stretches out a kink in his upper back. There is a light on in the living room still, he can see from the cracked-open door, and Erik walks over and leans against the doorframe.

“Charles, come to bed,” he intends to say.

Instead he finds himself pausing, his eyes alighting on Charles's hair, and he feels his entire body soften even as he drags himself more firmly from the realm of sleep.

Charles's hair is sticking in a thousand different directions, and as Erik watches he lifts a hand and rumples it further, a soft huff of air leaving his lips. His other hand throws the pen down on the desk in one sharp, quick movement, and he leans back in his chair and pinches the bridge of his nose. His hands fall to rest on his thighs and he is still for a moment, his eyes shut. Erik looks at him and thinks that he has never in his life been as tired as Charles seems. He reins in the words that hover on his tongue, because of course they are unnecessary, of course Charles is about to turn in.

But he is wrong. Charles opens his eyes and pushes his sleeves further up his arms, and bends over the desk again. He crosses out a sentence with two sure strokes of his pen and begins to scribble something in its place. There is a calmness and an intensity in his face that Erik associates, oddly enough, with Yom Kippur. When the congregation sings words of supplication—“we have sinned before you, o God, please pardon us, forgive us, atone us”—with all the fierceness of a demand. Charles looks at his thesis as though salvation for all the world lies within it, and he alone can plead and coax and beat it into submission.

That is probably why Erik loves him.

He didn't expect to love Charles at first, partly because he had never been in love with anyone before, and partly because Charles did not seem like the kind to change that. He had approached Erik in a pub, all smiles and charm and carefully-crafted pickup lines. A distraction, nothing more. Yes, he was attractive, and Erik probably would have gone home with him anyway. And yes, the fact that Charles is a mutant—the very fact that there is a word for what Erik is other than _freak_ , and that Charles introduces it to him—means that, no matter what, there would have been some sort of bond between them.

But love? Love comes later. It comes when Charles confesses late one night that part of him still wishes he'd gotten an education degree and started a school—a school for his sister, and for Erik, and all the mutant children who for one reason or another were afraid to attend one. It comes when Erik asks "why genetics?" and is treated to a lecture on identity and ethics and self-definition and discovery. It comes when Erik is making plans to go off to the continent for a few days, a list of German names burning a hole in his pocket, and Charles fights him.

It is a difficult fight, a vicious one. At one point Charles starts countering points that Erik hasn't vocalized yet, and Erik repays him by dragging out the cruelest of his memories until Charles falls back. But it is necessary, too. Erik has never told anyone the things that he tells Charles in that moment, and the fact that he is angry does not mean that he is any less relieved to say them. At one point Charles looks at Erik and says "You're sacrificing your own righteousness in the name of justice. So others don't have to," and Erik says yes. In equal shock he looks at Charles and says "You don't think I'm a monster. You think I can be saved," and Charles's _yes_ isn't a word, it's a sensation, an overwhelming wave of love-not-pity and resolution and grief and empathy.

Erik looks at the bags under Charles's eyes and the furrows on his forehead and marvels at the strength it must take for Charles to hear the worst of the world and still love it. Still think it can be saved. By him and his thesis, no less, a pen scratching diffidently on paper. If it were anyone else, he would think them naive—but the secret fact that Erik keeps close to his heart is that sometimes he, too, believes that Charles can save the world.

"You're doing it again," Charles says without looking up. He is biting the end of his pen and the words come out garbled.

"Doing what?" Erik says. He walks over and rests his hands on Charles's shoulders, digging his thumbs into the base of his neck. Charles shivers at the touch.

"Mocking me while simultaneously building me up as this... messianic hero, or something. It involves some very odd leaps of logic. That feels good."

"It would feel better if you came to bed with me."

He leans down and touches his lips to the nape of Charles neck, and smiles at the way Charles pushes back with his mind.

“You are far too distracting, you know that, don’t you? And it’s no use using that tone when you’re too tired to make good on it and I’m too tired to appreciate it. Go back to bed, darling, I’ll be in soon.”

“You said that four hours ago,” Erik points out.

He resumes massaging Charles’s shoulders and looks over the top of his head at the page he is editing. It is a mess; there are sentences crossed out, rewritten, crossed out again and written down in their original iterations, asterisks chasing each other all over the page, and a wrinkled brown circle at the top where Charles has accidentally set down a cup of tea. And this, he thinks with a smirk, is the savior of mutantkind. The Book of Charles, blueprint for the world-to-come, memoir of the new messiah—

“Come off it,” Charles says with a laugh. He sets down his pen and turns around, lifting his eyes to meet Erik. There is always such warmth in his face. Erik can hardly believe that people are capable of being as genuine as Charles seems. He takes Erik’s hand and presses a kiss to his knuckles. “Erik, love, do you think you could make yourself useful and brew me some more tea while I finish these last two pages? They’re crucial to the entire thesis, they really are.”

Erik cradles Charles’s face in his hands and bends down. He kisses his forehead, his left eyelid, and his lips. He can feel Charles exhale through his nose as the tension seeps from his body and he gives in to the kiss. And then Charles’s mind encompasses his, which is a sensation that will always be strange but always reassuring. Erik can’t reach into Charles’s mind, can’t rifle through his thoughts like a telepath would, so when Charles surrounds him like this it’s rather like looking up at a vast sky of soft, indistinct grey clouds.

 _Basherter_ , he thinks, _mine, my own. You are hopeless and I love you. Come to bed._

“All right,” Charles says with a soft laugh. “Tomorrow, though.”

“Tomorrow,” Erik says, and he means it.

Tomorrow Charles will get up and stain his hands again with ink and pencil lead, and Erik will bring him tea and remind him to stretch his back, and try to follow along as Charles debates with himself for an hour while he struggles with what he writes. They are both trying to save the world, in their own way, and Erik knows that if he can’t do it alone, neither can Charles. He will do his utmost to make sure that one of them, somehow, succeeds. For now, he simply rests his hand on Charles’s back and guides him towards the bedroom.

 


End file.
